What Does Ezekiel 4:2 Mean?
Set a siege against it, and build a ramp against it, and pour out a mound against it, and pitch camps against it, and set battering rams against it all around.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
And lay siege against it, and build a fort against it, and cast a mount against it; set the camp also against it, and set battering rams against it round about.THE KEY
The siege mound shares its Hebrew root with a highway: the attack builds a raised road up to the city wall.
THE MEANING
You are shown a city under total assault: the enemy camps around it, raises an approach, and arms every side. The violence is organized into a built system meant to force entry; the verse leaves the pressure and its target fully visible.
THE ROOT
סֹלְלָה
solelah
GROWS FROM
סלל
salal
To raise or pile up, making a raised path.
“pour out a mound” in this verse is solelah. The siege mound is named with the root that also gives Hebrew its word for a highway. It is a road raised against the city, making the siege an engineered approach to the wall rather than a ring of enemies alone.
ALSO GROWS
mesillah: A highway or raised roadway.
מְסִלָּה
The same root names the highway in Isaiah 40:3, revealing the roadway inside the siege mound.
sollu: Raise or cast up.
סֹלּוּ
Isaiah 62:10 uses this form to command the raising of a highway, a verbal kinship to the ramp raised here.
THE PATTERN
Siege is organized as enclosure: the attacker builds a perimeter and a raised approach to bring force against the city.
And it came to pass in the ninth year of his reign, in the tenth month, on the tenth day of the month, that Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon came, he and all his host, against Jerusalem, and pitched against it, and raised siege-works against it all around.For days will come upon you, when your enemies will drive stakes around you, and surround you, and press you in on every side.THE THREAD
A voice calls out in the wilderness, Clear the way of the LORD; make straight in the desert a raised road for our God.The Hebrew word for the siege mound shares its root with the word translated “highway” here. In Ezekiel, the raised way is built against the city; the shared root makes the mound’s function as an approach to the wall visible.
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